April 29, 2012

Let’s face it: School of Hard Knocks is terrible achievement. I just got it on my fourth character in three years and I had to go walk around outside for an hour just to calm down from how angry and frustrated it made me. I didn’t enjoy doing it. I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment in getting it done. The only satisfaction that comes from it is the fact that I am just a little closer to getting free super-fast flying.

To those who say “I got SoHK really easily!”: that’s great. I’m happy for you. Really, I am. I’m glad you had a good experience. I didn’t. Neither did a whole heck of a lot of other people. We don’t have your advantages or your luck and the game should not punish us for it by making us waste hour after hour doing something that makes us miserable to get one of the major meta achievements.

To those who say: “Achievements are optional, so don’t complain”: it’s true, achievements are optional. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be well-designed and fun. An achievement as badly designed as this one has no business being in the game, even if it’s optional. No one says you have to go into the restaurant on the corner, but if you did and they put broken glass in your hamburger you’d be pretty annoyed about it, wouldn’t you?

To those who say: “Achievements are supposed to be hard”: wrong. Achievements are not meant to be hard. Achievements are meant to be fun. A lot of fun can come from overcoming a challenge, but the degree of the challenge has to be reasonable. Beating a dungeon or raid boss is a fun challenge because those encounters are tuned to make sure that, with good gear, skillful play, and coordination, appropriate-level characters can get it done. The rewards come from making an effort and solving a problem. SoHK is a mess of griefing, aggravation, and dumb luck. The rewards come not from your efforts and skill but from being in the right place at the right time with cooperative enemies.

Other achievements that were poorly thought out, unreasonably hard, or just not fun have been changed already. There’s no reason for School of Hard Knocks to still be in the game in its current form. None.

April 13, 2012

I admit, this isn’t my best work, but I had to say something to the tiny group of whiners who have been making a fuss about pet battles and gardening and other such casual diversions planned for Pandaria. It’s perfectly fine to not be interested in those kinds of activities (frankly, I have no interest in pet battling, either) but it’s ridiculous to complain about completely optional things in a game that has so many other things for you to do. It’s like having a fit in the grocery store because they sell celery. If you don’t like celery, don’t get celery.